In the Blood by Lawrence Watt-Evans

Author:Lawrence Watt-Evans [Watt-Evans, Lawrence]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: vampire, serial killer, stories, unicorn, vampire and werewolf
Publisher: Misenchanted Press
Published: 2011-07-25T21:00:00+00:00

end

~~~~~

Richie

Ashley was only fourteen when she saw Richie for the first time. She was at the Lakeforest Mall with her mother, on a Friday night, doing some back-to-school shopping and being extremely bored, when she saw this guy hanging over the rail beside the escalator.

He was tall and thin and looked about sixteen, wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt and a black windbreaker even though it was August, and black sneakers with black socks. His hair was long and black and spiked.

All that black really stood out against the pastel and beige of the mall and the other people, and Ashley couldn’t help noticing him, so she looked him over.

His face was pale as cream, the palest she’d ever seen, as different from the pink and brown faces around him as his clothes were from the background. His eyes were an odd shade of green – and they were staring right at her.

The guy looked seriously creepy, Ashley thought. She stared back at first, but he didn’t turn away, didn’t so much as blink, and she lost her nerve. She looked straight ahead, at the back of her mother’s blouse, and when she looked again he was gone.

She saw him six months later, on a Tuesday night when Jay Jay had his driver’s license and took Ashley and Maureen and Shanna to the mall to hang out. The four of them were in front of Mrs. Fields eating giant cookies and laughing about some stupid joke when Ashley looked down over the rail and saw him sitting beside the fountains, staring up at her. Black jeans, black T-shirt, black socks and high-tops – no windbreaker this time, though; he was wearing a black woolen pea coat, like a sailor. His black hair was still long, but the spikes were gone.

His face was just as white as ever, and even from up here she could see the green of his eyes.

She ran a few steps alongside the rail, and his gaze followed her. She made a face, then ran back to the others.

“What’s up?” Jay Jay asked her.

She shook her head. “Nothing.” She didn’t look back over the rail for several minutes; when she did, the black-haired boy was gone.

Four months after that, when Ashley was fifteen, she was at the mall again with Maureen, Friday after dinner, more or less looking for a new swimsuit, and the two of them were talking about what they were going to do that summer, when Ashley looked up and found herself looking straight into those weird green eyes. She stopped walking.

Maureen stopped, as well.

“Hi,” the black-haired guy said.

“Hi, yourself,” Maureen answered.

Ashley didn’t say anything; she was too startled.

She remembered him, of course. He had the sort of face and style that are hard to forget, and she wasn’t a girl who had boys staring at her in that creepy way all that often – her looks didn’t rate that kind of attention.

Right now he was staring at her again, only this time it didn’t seem creepy at all.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.